If you’re like me, you’re already kinda bored by the “Warner Bros. is back” narrative. After all, the studio hasn’t put out a single movie since early October so its owner can save on release expenses and improve its financials ahead of a sale that will pay the top executives hundreds of millions of dollars while likely gutting the output to the point that Warner Bros. will very much not be back.

Still, the narrative persists, and it’s pretty wild that only nine months ago, the film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy endured that humiliating presentation at CinemaCon in Las Vegas. From the balcony at the Colosseum, where I sat, the Mike and Pam pitch to theater owners felt like dead executives walking. We all knew their boss, David Zaslav, had lost patience with flops like Aquaman 2, Mickey 17, Companion, and The Alto Knights, as well as the strategy of giving large budgets to auteurish filmmakers to make original movies. Zaslav was actively talking to potential replacements and refusing to offer Mike and Pam a vote of confidence in media reports, so who really cared what the lame ducks had to say?

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

JAMES CAMERON dives deep into the world of AVATAR, dispelling common misconceptions about the above-and-under-water motion capture techniques in AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH and his passion for deep sea exploration.

LISTEN NOW

We know what happened next: one of the all time great six-month middle fingers in Hollywood history: A Minecraft Movie ($958 million worldwide), Sinners ($368 million), Final Destination: Bloodlines ($316 million), F1 ($632 million), Superman ($617 million), Weapons ($269 million), The Conjuring: Last Rites ($495 million), and One Battle After Another ($206 million). All profitable in their theatrical releases—most wildly so—except for One Battle, which will lose money but likely win the best picture Oscar, beating sure-thing nominee Sinners and possibly F1, among others.

The Warners run of ’25 is already talked about as if Mike and Pam are the Killer Dillers, or Bob Evans at Paramount in the ’70s. A bit much, so let’s first be honest about that streak. Producer Roy Lee credits the duo for greenlighting Minecraft after previous chief Toby Emmerich “shut it down,” but the project was in development for a decade, and the props for pushing it forward also go to Legendary’s Mary Parent and the fortuitous casting of Jack Black after another actor dropped out. Final Destination and The Conjuring were already major horror franchises steered by company lieutenants—New Line’s Richard Brener had a strong hand in both, and Last Rites was shepherded by producer Peter Safran, who also runs DC with filmmaker-exec James Gunn. Their Superman worked well enough to please fans and enable future DC movies in this universe, but its worldwide gross was less than the $670 million for Man of Steel in 2013 (about $930 million in today’s dollars). So DC is getting a bit of a pass because expectations were so low, and Marvel whiffed worse this year with three films—Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, and Fantastic Four: First Steps—that each grossed far less than Superman. F1 was produced and financed by Apple, which is now dining out on the biggest original movie of the year (and treating Warners, its distributor, like it was merely a craft services vendor). And One Battle, with that $130 million price tag, will likely lose about $100 million in theaters. That leaves Sinners and Weapons as the true Mike and Pam home runs of ’25—especially Sinners, with its nearly $100 million budget and the controversial decision to allow the copyright to revert to filmmaker Ryan Coogler after 25 years. Two big statement wins amid solid support and fortuitous timing on the other hits. You know what? Who cares. The rule for studio heads is you take credit for the hits on your watch regardless of their origin stories, just like you take heat for the flops. (Emmerich greenlit Mickey 17, for instance, and Zaslav himself pushed for Alto Knights on behalf of his Hamptons crony Nick Pileggi.) Mike and Pam are still the Heroes of the Year for mounting a last stand of sorts against the full I.P. takeover of theatrical moviemaking—especially amid the sale of their very studio to either Netflix or Paramount, two buyers that want only to exploit its pre-branded properties—and for championing one of the most exciting trends in film: the franchise-ification of a widening swath of filmmakers. Is Coogler a franchise unto himself? Yes, we learned this year. How about Zach Cregger in horror? So far, sure. Emerald Fennell? We’ll find out in February, thanks to another big bet by Warner Bros. This isn’t new, of course. Directors as brands have existed as long as Hollywood. But with social media fueling broad fandoms that once seemed niche, and studios emptying their cupboards of existing branded I.P., there’s a new sense of the viability of hiring and promoting the directors themselves as the theatrical element. Forget the titles of the movies or their subject matter, Universal’s 2026 is all about Nolan and Spielberg, and ’27 is Jordan Peele and the Daniels. Warners’ upcoming year will be defined not by whether Supergirl or Clayface do either $300 million or $500 million, but if Fennell, Iñárritu/Cruise, Maggie Gyllenhaal, or even Denis Villeneuve (in a franchise he made cool) can deliver something that breaks through. Or so hope Mike and Pam.

The question is whether ’25 was a validation of their strategy or a bit of a fluke that will be exposed next year and beyond. Zaslav went from interviewing their replacements in March to renewing their deals in October, but the 2026 slate of 16 theatrical movies features more than a few red flags:

So, how do we feel about that slate? As interesting as it is risky, the variety that people in Hollywood say they want out of a studio, and yet fodder for many questions about Mike and Pam’s strategy after more than three years running Warners. Same with the talent deals that the duo doled out in their early days to the likes of Cruise, Robbie, Chalamet, Robert Pattinson, and others. Not much has come of that spending spree. Jon M. Chu is leaving for Paramount. Newly minted citizen of France George Clooney still has his bungalow on the lot despite not making a Warners movie since Gravity in 2013. (He’s developing another Ocean’s.) Many of the others probably would have pursued projects at Warners without the gesture of a first-look deal.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH Artisans discuss how they expanded the scope of Pandora with breathtaking new visuals and intricate world-building.

READ NOW

And now a new specialty division for smaller-budget and arthouse films, announced before the break and to be run by Christian Parkes, late of Neon. This one’s a head-scratcher for a lot of indie film veterans, coming amid the studio sale, layoffs, and downsizing. Paramount under David Ellison has shown little interest in awards-bait prestige movies, and Netflix already makes a ton of smaller movies; it bought Warners because it wants to make franchise movies. Warners had Warner Independent Pictures, and it was a very deliberate decision by Jeff Robinov in 2008 to close it in pursuit of bigger-budget movies with more upside.

To me, this move seems like Warners trying to increase its sale value with another division and a fresh pipeline of product. Remember, when it was eyeing a sale, MGM relaunched Orion Pictures twice as a separate label—in 2017 to pursue arthouse fare, and in 2020 under De Luca and Abdy as a platform for diverse filmmakers. The specialty unit can also get Warners talent to work for less, as Universal sometimes does when it develops a project at Focus Features—a benefit to Mike and Pam, who are often accused of overpaying arthouse talent for studio-style movies. HBO Max, which has the Warners output in the Pay 1 window, will also appreciate more titles. Regardless, this idea has been around since shortly after De Luca and Abdy took over, and if the goal is three more movies each year, either picked up at festivals or produced in-house, that’s probably a good thing—at least until the studio sale closes in a year or two and either Netflix or Paramount shuts it down. That’s kinda the state of Warner Bros. these days: movies in the face of the end times. For now at least, it seems like De Luca and Abdy—like the most admirable people in late-stage Hollywood—are going out swinging. Previous Heroes of the Year… 2021 Bela Bajaria, Netflix 2022 David Ellison, Skydance 2023 Ynon Kreiz, Mattel 2024 Shari Redstone, Paramount

Some runner-up heroes. Not all heroic behavior here, but winners who actually earned their wins…

Neal Mohan—The YouTube C.E.O. is a perennial nominee, thanks to the streamer accounting for 13 percent of all viewership on connected TVs and ad revenue of $10 billion per quarter. But this year, Mohan’s P.R. team put him out there a bunch more to position YouTube as more than just a user-generated sewer. Proof: When he ripped the Oscars from ABC starting in 2029, people kinda went, Sure, makes sense. Taylor Sheridan—Who negotiates a huge new contract more than three years before the end of their current one? Sheridan’s DGAF attitude would be off-putting if his shows didn’t put up such consistently strong numbers. Lachlan Murdoch—The Fox Corp. C.E.O. would probably be a nominee simply for the outsize dominance of Fox News, which averaged 2.72 million viewers in primetime and delivered its biggest year ever—more amazing in a non-election cycle. (Plus, Fox was doing brain rot waaaaaay before TikTok and Reels got all the headlines.) But Lachlan also achieved what many thought impossible: He finally shook loose his siblings and the family trust litigation in Nevada with $3.3 billion in total go-away money. Now the eldest boy is finally Rupert’s heir in both sensibility and power. Jimmy Kimmel—Admit it, you thought Kimmel was done when Disney “indefinitely” suspended his show in September over the backlash to his Charlie Kirk comments. But the ABC host emerged with his job intact and without having to apologize. He also scored a one-year renewal and all but ensured he’ll avoid a Colbert-style cancellation blindsiding. Taylor Swift—She bought her masters back, now profits from both versions of her songs, and got me to watch a six-episode show about a tour that was already a movie. Gunsmoke—Can anyone explain why a series that aired its first episode in 1955 has become a dominant player in streaming? Aided by appearing on FAST platform Pluto TV and the ad tiers of Paramount+ and Peacock, the Western, with 635 episodes, charted 13 times this year on the Nielsen Top 10 list of “acquired” series in the U.S. and, more impressively, twice on the overall Top 10 list of all streaming content (through November 23). No other series from earlier than 1989 made that list. Oners—Congrats to your mom, who this year learned the industry term for long, one-take tracking shots, which were everywhere from Emmy winners Adolescence and The Studio to the opening of Jay Kelly and the entirety of Ed Sheeran’s new Netflix special (probably the best use of the trick). I think we’re good on oners for a while. Tilly Norwood’s publicists—No, there was never a major talent agency frenzy to sign the A.I. “actress.” But that didn’t stop the media from writing about Tilly pretty constantly. (One reader legit asked me if Penske Media had some kind of financial incentive to promote her.) So let’s finally acknowledge Particle6, the company that created Tilly; founder Eline Van der Velden; and, most importantly, her P.R. team, who maybe worked harder than anyone in Hollywood this year, alive or A.I.

Have a great holiday, Matt

Correction: Song Sung Blue is a Focus movie, not Sony. The Quorum chart last Monday was incorrect. Apologies. Got a question, comment, complaint, or other nominees for the year’s hardest-working publicists? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

Need help? Review our FAQ page or contact us for assistance. For brand partnerships, email ads@puck.news.

You received this email because you signed up to receive emails from Puck, or as part of your Puck account associated with {{customer.email}}. To stop receiving this newsletter and/or manage all your email preferences, click here.

Puck is published by Heat Media LLC. 107 Greenwich St., New York, NY 10006